Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Brass A Sustainable Alloy

Brass is an alloy created by a mixture of copper and zinc. Known to have been found out since ancient times, its true value as an alloy was not understood or rather discovered until the post medieval period. The varying amounts of zinc and copper are used to obtain a large variety of brasses with different properties. Hence brass is not a obtained directly but is a product of two other metals.

The most commonly used brass is yellow brass the other two being red brass and semi-red brass. Yellow brass usually contains around 60 to 70% copper, and around 30% zinc with tiny amounts of lead and tin; the reason for its name being its color. Having a wide variety of applications, the most common places brass is used in, is in the form screws, pins, door handles, hand rails, light fittings, bath fittings (polished in chrome) and in marine ship building. One can notice that most of these applications have something to do with water or touch. The reason for these being, brass along with being a highly malleable and a having great thermal and electrical conductivity is also highly waterproof and can withstand high pressure in the harshest of environments (in the case of dezincification resistant brass). Brass also exhibits germicidal properties which is why they are the best alloys for use in applications where human touch is common. The greatest advantage of using brass in multiple applications is that it is a sustainable metal. It is a known fact that brass product supplier and manufacturers throughout the world depend on recycled brass scrap for their resources. Producing new brass from copper and zinc is simply too uneconomical and also results in a large amount of waste materials. Hence brass is an environmentally friendly alloy and is also hundred percent recyclable.

Sources of scrap brass are few in Dubai, the main scrap metal recycler being Lucky Recycling a division of Lucky Group. Lucky Group being and environmentally conscious body tries to make the availability of brass scrap easier to manufacturers and does that in the most ecologically beneficial way possible.